This is sort of a continuation of my previous post, though I'm going to focus more on fictional characters now.
Naruto has one of the best (or worst) villains I've ever seen, though not in the normal sense.
Shimura Danzo - last name first, the way the Japanese do - is a powerful village elder and war hawk. You don't see him much in the first part of the show, but you start feeling his presence soon enough.
Danzo has appointed himself the role of a shadow leader, the one who does the dirty (but necessary) deeds that can never see the light of day. The anime/manga doesn't make it very clear how much the village leader - the Hokage - really knows what Danzo is up to. We don't know if some of his worst deeds had the implicit approval of the true leader, or whether he was acting entirely on his own.
I consider him one of the best villains, not because I like him... but because he represents the type of villainy we can really see in the world today. The ones who feel they are justified in doing all sorts of things, because being soft is to be naive, and the village will fail if you let those bleeding hearts rule.
And despite the horrible things he does, for the most part you can tell he really does believe what he says. He really does think he's doing it all for the good of the village.
The one point where I think that fails, even though he clearly still believes his own spiel, is when the village is under attack. You see him in a hidden location, surrounded by the secret force he created... a force trained to be blindly obedient to him... and someone asks if they should go out and fight to save their village.
He tells them 'no'. He has decided, 'for the good of the village', that the current regime is too soft. And so he planned on conserving his forces and taking over in the wake of the current disaster.
Because doing so was more important than trying to save anybody now.
It's interesting, as well, to see the many different characterizations of Danzo... in fanfiction, of course.
He's often a hated villain, almost worse than the big headliners, tbh. Subtle, creeping. Some people imagine what the village would look like if he achieved his goals, and become the village leader.
Almost all of them have a darker, grimmer village that's even more militaristic than a village of magical ninjas already was.
And yet there are times, too, where people accept his logic, or paint him in a less terrible light.
Anyways. I was reading a fanfiction that I think portrayed Danzo rather well, capturing his strange mix of good and evil, and putting him in a setting that he's somewhat well suited for.
I say 'somewhat' because of what I'm about to describe...
See, in the canon story Naruto's village goes to war with a neighboring village. A quick one, and highly unrealistic, but what can you expect from a children's anime? It gave the protagonist a setting he could shine in, and moved on.
I think this fanfic does a good job of imagining a more realistic version of the canon story. After all, the village is training young children how to kill other people... I don't dig too deep into it because (as I said) it's a children's show, and it's giving children characters of about their age that they can relate to. And even though I generally like the show for other elements (the whole debate about the cycle of hatred fit in nicely with some of my experiences in Iraq, though the story didn't exactly resolve it neatly. Which is in some ways more fitting, I suppose. I also like how Naruto, even if it's solely because of being the main character, is often able to make change through empathy. Well, empathy and fists, tbh. But he reminds me a lot of Brené Brown's Ted talk on vulnerability) this story reminded me a lot of my time in the military.
In particular the second part. See, in this fanfic the war with their neighboring village lasts longer than one story arc. The villages, btw, represent the military power of their respective nations... so Naruto is from the Leaf Village, in the Fire Nation. Their opponents are from the Sand Village, in the Wind Nation.
And so we see Naruto and his friends occupying Sand Village. Naturally, they're out in a desert.
I wonder sometimes if this author has military experience, because he captures a lot of what it's like to be deployed. You're often bored, rather isolated, and people go a little bit crazy finding some meager helping of entertainment or pleasure...
Like that famous quote that "war is 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror".
Plus it shows the complicated relationships people built with each other, as occupier and occupied. You know, it's not exactly a shock that World War II led to Japanese and German war brides. Or that (even without a hot war) soldiers deployed to Korea sometimes bring back Korean brides.
Heck, those sorts of ties go back waaaaaaaaaaaay farther, and it's not just about marriage and war brides. The Crusades were given some credit for the later Renaissance, unless historians have changed their opinion on that... because even though Europe pretty much lost all knowledge of Greek history, the Arabs kept it... and interacting with them during the Crusades led to the restoration of a lot of that lost knowledge. You can probably find even older examples, but you get the gist...
Anyways. Naruto (and team) were out in the village when they see some of their fellow ninjas bullying a couple of the local kids, so they step in and stop it.
Danzo punishes them... not for stopping their fellow ninjas. He punishes them for doing so in a way that publicly showed disunity in front of their enemies. He probably wouldn't have cared if Naruto had handled it quietly, but he absolutely could not support any sign of dissension.
I understand that logic. I'm familiar with it. I know, in the military, that as an officer I should support the chain of command. Public dissension, especially as an officer, encourages insubordination and possible mutiny. I could think and feel things privately, can disagree, but I should show it behind closed doors... and never out in front of the troops. I say 'never' here, but there are extreme circumstances that might possibly warrant that... it's just that things have got to be really, really, bad. Actually, this might be a good time for a story.
There I was, out in Tikrit. Our battalion commander had gone to another location for something-or-other, and was having a hard time getting back. He'd taken a helicopter, you see, and you sometimes had to wait days to catch the next ride back. He was impatient, and called the office to see about getting a convoy to come down and get him.
Now, I suppose this could be a reasonable request for a battalion commander for an infantry unit, or somesuch. But this was a support unit and most of his forces were tasked out to other units. There was no real need for him to immediately return.
And convoys are where most of the risks were, where the IEDs and VBIEDs can target you. There were definitely some mutterings of concern, as the soldiers weren't all that keen on risking their lives on this.
I don't really recall how it got resolved, I think our Battalion XO or S3 (the second and third in command) basically told him 'No', and the whole thing was dropped.
I recall it, though, because some of the soldiers tried asking me what I thought about the whole thing. And I was in the uncomfortable position of not being able to say "I agree, it's a stupid idea, and your lives are worth better than this" because it's one thing to say that as another enlisted soldier... and it's quite another to say it when you're in a leadership position.
I've been in similar situations before, though none as dramatic and none with the potential for dire consequences... and it's part of why it's so important to me to have a work environment where I can trust the decisions that are made. I'd rather agree with the decisions I'm supposed to support, and not deal with the cognitive dissonance otherwise.
For those who don't understand why that matters... imagine a work environment where the group meets, they come to a decision, and because someone disagrees they go around blabbing their opinion to anyone and everyone. Then you have to revisit the issue, again and again, and it just Never. Goes. Away. Except that they set the tone, and everyone else starts doing it, and next thing you know no decisions are ever truly settled and the ideas (good and bad) just keep coming back. Sometimes a bad decision is better than no decision. That's again more applicable to soldiers under fire, but it holds true to a lesser degree in office environments. Anyways, once a decision has been made, it's time to either support the decision or realize that you can't... and need to resign or find a new job or something. Unless you're actively trying to sabotage an organization you hate, I suppose.
Anyways. In this fic Danzo punishes Naruto and his team for showing the enemy that the occupying force wasn't unified, and I can see his logic...
But I think his priorities were skewed, which is the problem with Danzo in a nutshell.
He should also have been concerned with making it clear that the occupying forces were not going to terrorize the population. Because even though nobody likes losing, or having a foreign force occupy their territory, the fight might actually be over if the occupation is handled right. When it's handled poorly, though, people who are war weary and willing to move on (albeit unhappily) can find a few more sparks of energy as they realize just how awful their occupiers are. Can convince themselves that anything is better than the constant ______.
Historically...
Historically, back before nationalization and national armies and the like, troops often made their money with looting and pillaging conquered villagers. The Vandals wrecked Rome, lending their name to the world 'vandal' today.
There's something about the power dynamics of occupation that are similar to the dynamics captured in the Stanford prison experiment, and even if the majority of your soldiers wouldn't cross the line... any large enough population of people will have a few who would. Who may even take great delight in doing so.
That's why firm leadership and clear Rules of Engagement are so important.
Anyways, Danzo was concerned with looking weak in front of the enemy, when I think he should have been more concerned with making it clear that the bullying soldiers were acting without orders and did not represent the official position of the Leaf Village. (Historically, some stern leaders have even hung the first rapists or looters they catch, to make it clear such behavior won't be tolerated. Others have looked the other way. The point here is that there's are a lot of choices about how to deal with this sort of thing, and this sort of thing is rather inevitable in these sorts of situations, so you better figure out what matters the most and what sort of policies you're going to enforce.)
Naruto has one of the best (or worst) villains I've ever seen, though not in the normal sense.
Shimura Danzo - last name first, the way the Japanese do - is a powerful village elder and war hawk. You don't see him much in the first part of the show, but you start feeling his presence soon enough.
Danzo has appointed himself the role of a shadow leader, the one who does the dirty (but necessary) deeds that can never see the light of day. The anime/manga doesn't make it very clear how much the village leader - the Hokage - really knows what Danzo is up to. We don't know if some of his worst deeds had the implicit approval of the true leader, or whether he was acting entirely on his own.
I consider him one of the best villains, not because I like him... but because he represents the type of villainy we can really see in the world today. The ones who feel they are justified in doing all sorts of things, because being soft is to be naive, and the village will fail if you let those bleeding hearts rule.
And despite the horrible things he does, for the most part you can tell he really does believe what he says. He really does think he's doing it all for the good of the village.
The one point where I think that fails, even though he clearly still believes his own spiel, is when the village is under attack. You see him in a hidden location, surrounded by the secret force he created... a force trained to be blindly obedient to him... and someone asks if they should go out and fight to save their village.
He tells them 'no'. He has decided, 'for the good of the village', that the current regime is too soft. And so he planned on conserving his forces and taking over in the wake of the current disaster.
Because doing so was more important than trying to save anybody now.
It's interesting, as well, to see the many different characterizations of Danzo... in fanfiction, of course.
He's often a hated villain, almost worse than the big headliners, tbh. Subtle, creeping. Some people imagine what the village would look like if he achieved his goals, and become the village leader.
Almost all of them have a darker, grimmer village that's even more militaristic than a village of magical ninjas already was.
And yet there are times, too, where people accept his logic, or paint him in a less terrible light.
Anyways. I was reading a fanfiction that I think portrayed Danzo rather well, capturing his strange mix of good and evil, and putting him in a setting that he's somewhat well suited for.
I say 'somewhat' because of what I'm about to describe...
See, in the canon story Naruto's village goes to war with a neighboring village. A quick one, and highly unrealistic, but what can you expect from a children's anime? It gave the protagonist a setting he could shine in, and moved on.
I think this fanfic does a good job of imagining a more realistic version of the canon story. After all, the village is training young children how to kill other people... I don't dig too deep into it because (as I said) it's a children's show, and it's giving children characters of about their age that they can relate to. And even though I generally like the show for other elements (the whole debate about the cycle of hatred fit in nicely with some of my experiences in Iraq, though the story didn't exactly resolve it neatly. Which is in some ways more fitting, I suppose. I also like how Naruto, even if it's solely because of being the main character, is often able to make change through empathy. Well, empathy and fists, tbh. But he reminds me a lot of Brené Brown's Ted talk on vulnerability) this story reminded me a lot of my time in the military.
In particular the second part. See, in this fanfic the war with their neighboring village lasts longer than one story arc. The villages, btw, represent the military power of their respective nations... so Naruto is from the Leaf Village, in the Fire Nation. Their opponents are from the Sand Village, in the Wind Nation.
And so we see Naruto and his friends occupying Sand Village. Naturally, they're out in a desert.
I wonder sometimes if this author has military experience, because he captures a lot of what it's like to be deployed. You're often bored, rather isolated, and people go a little bit crazy finding some meager helping of entertainment or pleasure...
Like that famous quote that "war is 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror".
Plus it shows the complicated relationships people built with each other, as occupier and occupied. You know, it's not exactly a shock that World War II led to Japanese and German war brides. Or that (even without a hot war) soldiers deployed to Korea sometimes bring back Korean brides.
Heck, those sorts of ties go back waaaaaaaaaaaay farther, and it's not just about marriage and war brides. The Crusades were given some credit for the later Renaissance, unless historians have changed their opinion on that... because even though Europe pretty much lost all knowledge of Greek history, the Arabs kept it... and interacting with them during the Crusades led to the restoration of a lot of that lost knowledge. You can probably find even older examples, but you get the gist...
Anyways. Naruto (and team) were out in the village when they see some of their fellow ninjas bullying a couple of the local kids, so they step in and stop it.
Danzo punishes them... not for stopping their fellow ninjas. He punishes them for doing so in a way that publicly showed disunity in front of their enemies. He probably wouldn't have cared if Naruto had handled it quietly, but he absolutely could not support any sign of dissension.
I understand that logic. I'm familiar with it. I know, in the military, that as an officer I should support the chain of command. Public dissension, especially as an officer, encourages insubordination and possible mutiny. I could think and feel things privately, can disagree, but I should show it behind closed doors... and never out in front of the troops. I say 'never' here, but there are extreme circumstances that might possibly warrant that... it's just that things have got to be really, really, bad. Actually, this might be a good time for a story.
There I was, out in Tikrit. Our battalion commander had gone to another location for something-or-other, and was having a hard time getting back. He'd taken a helicopter, you see, and you sometimes had to wait days to catch the next ride back. He was impatient, and called the office to see about getting a convoy to come down and get him.
Now, I suppose this could be a reasonable request for a battalion commander for an infantry unit, or somesuch. But this was a support unit and most of his forces were tasked out to other units. There was no real need for him to immediately return.
And convoys are where most of the risks were, where the IEDs and VBIEDs can target you. There were definitely some mutterings of concern, as the soldiers weren't all that keen on risking their lives on this.
I don't really recall how it got resolved, I think our Battalion XO or S3 (the second and third in command) basically told him 'No', and the whole thing was dropped.
I recall it, though, because some of the soldiers tried asking me what I thought about the whole thing. And I was in the uncomfortable position of not being able to say "I agree, it's a stupid idea, and your lives are worth better than this" because it's one thing to say that as another enlisted soldier... and it's quite another to say it when you're in a leadership position.
I've been in similar situations before, though none as dramatic and none with the potential for dire consequences... and it's part of why it's so important to me to have a work environment where I can trust the decisions that are made. I'd rather agree with the decisions I'm supposed to support, and not deal with the cognitive dissonance otherwise.
For those who don't understand why that matters... imagine a work environment where the group meets, they come to a decision, and because someone disagrees they go around blabbing their opinion to anyone and everyone. Then you have to revisit the issue, again and again, and it just Never. Goes. Away. Except that they set the tone, and everyone else starts doing it, and next thing you know no decisions are ever truly settled and the ideas (good and bad) just keep coming back. Sometimes a bad decision is better than no decision. That's again more applicable to soldiers under fire, but it holds true to a lesser degree in office environments. Anyways, once a decision has been made, it's time to either support the decision or realize that you can't... and need to resign or find a new job or something. Unless you're actively trying to sabotage an organization you hate, I suppose.
Anyways. In this fic Danzo punishes Naruto and his team for showing the enemy that the occupying force wasn't unified, and I can see his logic...
But I think his priorities were skewed, which is the problem with Danzo in a nutshell.
He should also have been concerned with making it clear that the occupying forces were not going to terrorize the population. Because even though nobody likes losing, or having a foreign force occupy their territory, the fight might actually be over if the occupation is handled right. When it's handled poorly, though, people who are war weary and willing to move on (albeit unhappily) can find a few more sparks of energy as they realize just how awful their occupiers are. Can convince themselves that anything is better than the constant ______.
Historically...
Historically, back before nationalization and national armies and the like, troops often made their money with looting and pillaging conquered villagers. The Vandals wrecked Rome, lending their name to the world 'vandal' today.
There's something about the power dynamics of occupation that are similar to the dynamics captured in the Stanford prison experiment, and even if the majority of your soldiers wouldn't cross the line... any large enough population of people will have a few who would. Who may even take great delight in doing so.
That's why firm leadership and clear Rules of Engagement are so important.
Anyways, Danzo was concerned with looking weak in front of the enemy, when I think he should have been more concerned with making it clear that the bullying soldiers were acting without orders and did not represent the official position of the Leaf Village. (Historically, some stern leaders have even hung the first rapists or looters they catch, to make it clear such behavior won't be tolerated. Others have looked the other way. The point here is that there's are a lot of choices about how to deal with this sort of thing, and this sort of thing is rather inevitable in these sorts of situations, so you better figure out what matters the most and what sort of policies you're going to enforce.)
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